The photo above is from Jinli Ancient Street!
Another early start today because our ticket for the High Speed Rail to Chongqing was at 5 PM, we wanted to maximize as much of our time in Chengdu before we left, and we had to pick up laundry by 12 PM.
People's Park was the first item on the agenda. The walk from the hotel was about 25 minutes, and I am glad we did it because we walked by a lot of interesting places, we would not have been able to see if we taxied or took public transit. I think I mentioned in Shenzhen travel log that transit in China is pretty strange. Some cities allow for credit card tap to ride transit and some require you have a Chinese phone number to be able to register your WeChat or AliPay to ride transit. It does not make sense because I'd figure their "Uber" service, DiDi would require more information to ride.
We got to walk through Tianfu Square, see the Mao statue, and Science & Technology Museum buildings!
Cole mentioned that the buildings look very Soviet like, and I could not agree more. When he said that, I was transported back in my AP World History classroom to my teacher, Mr. Chan's lecture on Socialist Realism about the Sino-Soviet Friendship. Although I was angered originally when UCSD did not take my AP score for any credit or course equivalent, I am really glad I took the course because it gave me a better appreciation for where I visited so far. Everybody told me it was a useless AP class and I should not have taken it, but I bet they could not tell me I would be in China 3 years later 😂. I remember being so anxious about trying to get an A and do good on the AP test at the time, but now I am just anxious about passing and not getting kicked out of school 💀.
From Tianfu Square, it's a straight shot to People's Park.
If I am being honest, I did not take that many photos of the park because quite frankly, it was not at all well maintained, and just very saddening the state the park was in. The city of Chengdu should take a page out of Berkeley's book and demolish their People's Park to build housing.
Here are the limited photos I do have though:
Despite being pretty dilapidated, I was surprised how lively the park was. Granted we did come around 9 AM and that's when the Tai-Chi in the Park class is, so that could be a contributing factor to the crowd.
Those are the only photos of the park. I was really bothered by how ran down it was, but it gave me a bigger appreciation for Japanese parks and the lengths they go to preserving cultural heritage sites!
From People's Park, we headed over to Jinli Pedestrian Street.
Jinli Pedestrian Street would have been a bigger highlight on the trip if it was not so gentrified, and if a merchant did not try to scam us over tea. He was trying to charge $94 for one bag of tea and call it a discount. I told him I bought my 4K action camera for cheaper 😂.
If you walk out of the street, you end up in this gorgeous courtyard next to a beautiful garden and pond.
After Jinli Pedestrian Street, we headed back to the hotel area to pick up laundry, grab lunch, explore Chun Xi Road more, and check out of the hotel.
I am pretty Louis Vuitton is China public enemy #1 due to the Molly Tea scandal. That is cultural appropriation to the extreme 🤦♂️‼️
I was surprised there was no reference of pandas at this Louis Vuitton store considering it was in Chengdu, they just did a collaboration with Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami and one of the featured pieces had this panda:
During 2024 summer, I visited Murakami's exhibition in Kyoto, and they had his iconic flower standing on a Louis Vuitton trunk:
Such a missed opportunity by Louis Vuitton to not make a panda sculpture for Chengdu, they probably could have gained some positive press, and public interest, had they done it. Oh well, back to more photos of pandas:
The line behind me is to take a photo with the panda, but catch is you have to buy a $10 drink. One of the craziest scams, I've seen. $10 to walk a few more meters just to get a closer photo where not even the entire panda can be captured 🤣.
I guess it just an Asian thing to have ice-rinks in malls, but I practice at a mall ice rink in La Jolla, so I am not too sure 🤣🤨. We stopped by a Chinese "CVS" store because Cole had to get bandages to prevent chafing on his knee wound from his fall on the ice the day before. We were wearing figure skates, and he forgot about the toe-picks, and he took a tumble.
By this time, it was already time to leave for the High Speed Rail station, so we had to say our goodbyes to Chengdu 😔
We were able to actually use public transit to get to Chengdu East Railway station, so everything went pretty smoothly.
We got to the station a little earlier than intended because we wanted to be safe as my experience with the check-in and security process going from Hong Kong to Shenzhen took forever. In hindsight, I was naive at the time because Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region, so of course there is an immigration process, but Chengdu to Chongqing is domestic, so I should not have been as paranoid. It's funny how the big three (phone, keys, and wallet) changes wherever you travel. In China, the big three is phone, passport, and portable charger (Pretty often, I had to charge my iPhone 13 4 times a day). The security guards just scanned our passports, we put our bags through the scanners, and we were off!
Although we did a lot for two days in Chengdu, it was not enough, at least for me. I appreciated the time I had there, but it felt super partial. I really wish I am fortunate enough to visit Chengdu again, and have a more complete experience!